A blog for passing time, and passing messages about media, about media ecology which is the study of media environments, about language and symbols, about technology, about communication, about consciousness, about culture, about life and the universe, about everything and nothing, about time...

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Having returned from Italy on Sunday evening, it seems appropriate enough to share this video, originally brought to my attention by Corey Anton. The song is by Adriano Celentano, and the lyrics are described as how English would sound if you didn't understand it, didn't speak the language.

This is a fake English, an attempt to mimic the sound of English, or the phonemes, to use the term favored by linguistics. Every language has its own set of specific sounds that it uses, that differs in some ways from the phonemes of other languages. When infants begin to babble, they make all kinds of sounds, but through interaction with others, the child learns which sounds are significant and which are not, which sounds make a difference in the meaning of words, and which sounds are ignored, and in this way starts to learn how to speak the language, before learning the meanings of words. This is an example of how the medium is the message, by the way, as McLuhan would point out if he were with us right now.

Myself, I do have a very early memory of being at the movies with my parents, maybe it was Radio City, seeing faces up on the screen, hearing them talking, but not understanding what they were saying. Of course, a great deal of meaning is transmitted by the nonverbal cues such as facial expression, posture and distance from one another, and tone of voice (and note that there is some mimicking of American body language in the video as well).

But in the case of this song, it's just pure play with phonemes, or you might call it phony English.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

As of today, March 15th, my term as Executive Director of the Institute of General Semantics has come to an end. Over the past three years of my tenure there, I hope that I helped the organization to move forward, and my new book, On the Binding Biases of Time, was a farewell gift to the IGS, in that all of my royalties are being donated to the Institute (have you ordered your copy yet?). My time with the IGS has certainly been a great learning experience, and it has been an honor to walk in the shoes of Alfred Korzybski for a brief time. But now it's time to move on, and since I'm in Italy as I write this (for a McLuhan Centenary event that I will write more about later), I'll just say, arrivederci IGS!

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

I want to ask you to help me correct an inaccuracy out here on the net, an inaccuracy that amounts to an injustice. Here’s the story:

Neil Postman wrote, “Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.” This is the first sentence that opens his book, The Disappearance of Childhood, which was originally published in 1982 by Delacorte Press.

I can remember being a young doctoral student in the old media ecology program at NYU, I was just 22 when I started there in 1980, and seeing Neil writing the book with a black felt tip pen on yellow legal pads.

Neil Postman wrote “Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see” as the first sentence of the Introduction to that book, appearing on p. xi. Here, take a look:

The Disappearance of Childhood was the second of Postman's major works providing a critical analysis of television's influence on culture. It was preceded by Teaching as a Conserving Activity, and followed by Amusing Ourselves to Death. And if you find Postman's media ecology scholarship at all interesting and valuable, and especially if you've read Amusing Ourselves to Death and you haven't read The Disappearance of Childhood, then you will find The Disappearance of Childhood to be a delightful companion piece, a well-crafted extended essay, and important work of cultural criticism.

Postman begins by writing that “children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see,” because he was writing about communication, which involves the sending of messages through a channel to a receiver. In the case of messages sent to the future, the receiver may be unknown to us, but the basic idea still applies. This view originates in the post-war era with the Shannon-Weaver Model:

The Shannon-Weaver Model was modified by communication theorist David Berlo circa 1960:

But the important point is that Postman was writing about communication, and thinking about children, and childhood, in terms of communication. The idea that children are our legacy, a way of projecting something of ourselves into the future, is a time-honored, traditional notion. But thinking of children as messages, as part of the process of communication, is a relatively new orientation.

And as any good media ecology scholar knows, in 1964 Marshall McLuhan declared that "the medium is the message," by which he meant (among other things) that the messages we send are influenced in significant ways by the medium that we use to create and send them And The Disappearance of Childhood is all about how childrenas messages are influenced by the media that they use, and that we use to prepare our children to carry on for us in the future. And it is about how childhood is a message that is influenced by the medium that we use to create it.

Yes, create it, because childhood is a cultural construct (albeit one based on an underlying biological reality), a message we send to ourselves about biological and social reproduction. In print culture, children came to be seen as special and innocent, and in need of extended protection as they were cloistered away in schools, while television culture has returned us in some ways to a view of childhood that does not allow for much distinction between children and adults, hence the title The Disappearance of Childhood (which also signals the disappearance of adulthood).

But you really have to read the book to get Postman's argument. And I only provide this cursory summary to underline the fact that Postman's quote, “children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see,” with its particular emphasis on children and communication, originated out of a very specific set of circumstances, and its meaning is quite clear in that context. But it also has a wonderfully poetic quality, evocative and compelling, and works quite well standing alone. Some might even be fooled into thinking it is some kind of ancient proverb, despite its clearly contemporary sensibility.

“Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see” is Neil Postman's most famous quote. So what's the problem, you might ask? And I'm glad you did. The problem is that when you Google the quote nowadays, you get something like this:

How did this come to be, you might ask? And I'm glad you did. You see, this John W. Whitehead wrote a book entitled, ironically enough, The Stealing of America.

And this book was published in 1983, a year after The Disappearance of Childhood. Just to be clear, here's the copyright page from Whitehead's book:

And here's the copyright page from Postman's book:

And just to dispel any lingering doubts, here is p. 68 of Whitehead's book, where he specifically cites Postman:

The Disappearance of Childhood also is included in the list of references that appear at the end of the book.

So, are you ready now? Ok, here is how Postman's quote appears in Whitehead's book, starting on the bottom of p. 116 and continuing on to p. 117:

Ah ha, you may be saying! Caught red-handed! Well, the problem is that the circles that Whitehead travels in, and the readership that he picks up, is quite different from those associated with Postman. So who knew? It would have been quite the coincidence to come across it back in the 80s, or even the 90s. But, the quote being so poetic and memorable, it got picked up from Whitehead's book, and reproduced all over the place with the wrong attribution. It appears in some baby book, which probably amplified the error significantly.

Who is this guy, anyway, you might ask? Well, you can read about him on this page from the Rutherford Institute website: About John W. Whitehead. And you can read about the Rutherford Institute on their Wikipedia entry: Rutherford Institute.

Not that it matters much. I am writing this, and asking for your help, not to cast blame or level accusations. Postman was certainly the easygoing, forgiving sort of person who would not have made a big issue out of this. But speaking for those of us who honor his memory, and who believe in credit where credit is due, we would like to set the record straight.

The problem is that it is very hard to set the record straight on the web. It is very hard to get the content of websites changed. You can send a message, but it may be that the site is no longer active, or no longer actively supervised, or it may be that the individuals associated with the site just don't want to be bothered, or just don't care. Believe me, attempts have been made, and met with no success.

But, the main thing to do when dealing with problems like this is to accentuate the positive (see my previous post, Digital Damage Control). So, I am asking you to help to get the word out on the web, anyway that you can.

Please feel free to repost all or part of this entry on your own blog or site or elsewhere on the web. Or write your own post about this situation, using any part of this post that you care to, it is entirely open and available for copying and revising.

If you do post this or a similar message anywhere else, let me know, and I will add an acknowledgment and link at the end of this post.

And/or, please link to this post.

And/or, spread the word and the link via Twitter, Facebook, and other social media. If you tweet, Neil Postman wrote, “Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see,” that will be less than 50 characters, so you can add, please retweet, include a link to this post or another one, and/or note that we want to remedy an injustice.

I ask that you please help me to get this particular message out there, get more positive posts and listings out there, and at least we can start to set the record straight.

Neil Postman did not live to see this time of Google and social media, but today, March 8th, 2011, is the 80th anniversary of his birth, and if he were still with us, he would joke about how what we are doing here is launching Operation Childhood, and probably ask if there wasn't some better way for us to spend our time, like reading a good book. But deep down, he would be very much appreciative of the messages that we now can send on his behalf.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

So, I have to hand it to good folks at Google this time. Today's Google home page features an adaptation of The Spirit, Will Eisner's famous mysteryman from the early days of comic books, and they do a really wonderful job of reproducing Eisner's signature style. Here, see for yourself:

It's not just the face of The Spirit, it's the way that the letters appear as apartment buildings, occupied by the kinds of people you'd find on Manhattan's lower east side back in the depression era. I just have to say I love it! Eisner was both a pioneer and one of the all time great comicbook creators. Here's an example of Eisner's spirited artwork:

Google has unveiled its latest doodle—a creative play on the logo that adorns the company's primary search page. Comics artist Scott McCloud assisted in the creation of today's illustration, which pays tribute to comic book legend Will Eisner. The masked character making up the two "Os" in Google represents one of Eisner's more well-known works: The Spirit, or Denny Colt, a crime-fighting detective whose comic (of the same name) ran in newspapers between 1940 and 1952.

I was doubly impressed to see that Scott McCloud was involved. I brought him up in a previous post here on blog time passing, Understanding the Comics Medium, and his book, Understanding Comics, is one of the assigned readings I've included for my graduate class on Media and Symbolic Form at Fordham University. David Murphy provides a little more information about McCloud at the end of the piece:

McCloud, who helped fashion today's Google doodle (in honor of what would have been Eisner's 94th birthday), previously illustrated Google's Chrome comic book. He's also a judge for the "Doodle 4 Google" contest, which invites K-12 students to submit Google-themed illustrations for the chance to win a $15,000 grand prize—a college scholarship, of course, in addition to other technological goodies.

The article also gives some background information about Eisner, including the following:

Subsequent work by Eisner, including his graphic novels entitled, "A Contract With God, and Other Tenement Stories," as well as a graphical retelling of Herman Melville's, "Moby Dick," earned Eisner the unofficial honor of being considered the father of modern graphical storytelling. He continue to publish graphical books up until his death in 2004, mainly focusing on using print graphics to retell stories, and expand upon the characters, of various novels and myths cemented in the public consciousness.

"For most of his career, Eisner was years, even decades, ahead of the curve. I saw him debating artists and editors half his age, and there was rarely any question who the youngest man in the room was," writes McCloud. "It helped that he never stood on ceremony. Everyone was his peer, regardless of age or status. None of us called him 'Mr. Eisner.' He was just 'Will.'"

The recognition of Eisner's influence even stretched as far as the awards platform—specifically, the creation of the Will Eisner Comic Industry Award, otherwise known as the "Oscar" of the comics industry, in 1987.

Well then, happy birthday Will, and as for Google, well folks, that's The Spirit!